Night Winds Read Free Page A

either. I don’t believe any thinking woman does.”
    Aunt Alberta slapped her hand down on the table . “Have you no sense at all? Do you realize what you’ve lost, or what you’ve cost your father’s reputation?”
    Shae felt the blood drain from her face . Though she cared little for her own loss, she felt guilt over her father’s. Guilt and fear, twined together like two hissing serpents.
    For if she’d learned anything these past six years, she’d learned how King reacted to a loss . With this incident, she may have pushed him beyond the point of purgatory. Now he’d make her life a living hell.

CHAPTER TWO
    It was after ten o’clock already, but Phillip Payton couldn’t think of sleeping. Though the maids had smoothed the fresh linens on his bed, he felt as if a thousand sand fleas crawled over his body. His flesh itched with the memory of the girl he’d left on the beach.
    What if no one had helped her ? He remembered the blood spots on the sand. She must have cut her foot quite badly, and by now she would have lain there for almost two hours.
    Served her right, he tried to tell himself . Her game was obvious. Marry poor, foolish Ethan for his money and his name.
    But what had put her off of it, he wondered ? Had she only lost her nerve, as he’d assumed? Or had the gossip about her mother and Shae’s unladylike profession turned her?
    Thinking of his own experience with gossip, he almost pitied her . Ever since his father died, he’d heard the whispers.
    “A shame he’s not more like the old man . Just doesn’t have a head for business.”
    By that, his detractors meant he wasn’t the ruthless terror his father had been . If a man was injured on the job, Phillip saw to it the company provided for his family. Despite his earlier assumptions that blacks and whites could never work together peacefully, he’d been willing to listen to a group of freedmen and afterwards, to give several a try. When those men proved themselves, Phillip agreed that he would continue to consider Negroes for positions on the docks. His “radical” hiring practices infuriated the white workers, who walked off the job and disrupted wharf business for weeks. His fellow businessmen insisted he’d “misspoken” and need only clarify his comments to the black men. In other words, go back on his word.
    When he’d refused, the whispered gossip rose in volume to an outraged roar.
    He’d upset the establishment, and for that they made him pay. His position on the board of the Port Providence Wharf Company, which he’d gained out of respect for his father’s influence, was unanimously rescinded. Still, he stubbornly refused to reconsider. His family’s social invitations mysteriously dwindled and then ceased. His mother was so upset with him, she’d gone to stay with her brother in New Orleans. He imagined she intended to boycott her home city until he finally bowed to the weight of her displeasure.
    Only Ethan Lowel l a friend he’d been long estranged fro m his sisters, and his fiancée stood beside him in this crisis. Well, at least he was certain of Ethan and his sisters. Rachel had “gone visiting” in Houston about the same time his mother had left town. But she planned to return tomorrow. Even though he hadn’t heard from her, he wasn’t worried. Much.
    A gilded clock ticked on the mantel . Surely, someone must have found Shae Rowan by this time. People often walked along that section of beach, most of them in better moods than he had been tonight. She wouldn’t have been alone too long, he told himself.
    But what if the wrong people stopped for her ? With its healthy maritime economy, Port Providence drew rowdy sailors and longshoremen by the score. He’d read about so many brawls and knife fights in the paper that he’d long since lost count.
    Despite her wretched manners, her rank stupidity, and her transparent goals, the girl was beautiful . A helpless morsel in pink silk upon the sand.
    Phillip